Obama Must Explain His Broken Promise on Medical Marijuana, and Soon

By
Scott Morgan, The Huffington Post
on October 20, 2011

This week’s news that support for the legalization of marijuana has reached a record high of 50% ought to bother Obama’s re-election team a little bit. No, not because pot’s more popular than the president, although that really says a lot. The problem, rather, is that Obama’s heavily publicized and widely praised promise to respect state medical marijuana laws has recently been shattered into more pieces than the campaign can count.

In only a few short months, the Obama administration has presided over a vicious series of political assaults on medical marijuana patients and providers across the nation, carried out by numerous federal agencies. The situation just continues to get more ugly and insane from one week to the next:

Federal prosecutors have threatened to arrest state employees for administering state laws, resulting in stalled programs and reduced patient access.

U.S. Attorneys in California recently revived the Bush era tactic of threatening to seize property from landlords who rent to medical marijuana facilities.

After 9 years of failing to respond, the DEA recently denied a petition to reschedule marijuana, ignoring a vast body of scientific evidence proving the drug’s medical efficacy.

Federal threats have caused numerous banks to close the accounts of businesses that provide medical marijuana to qualified patients.

And, of course, the DEA continues to raid tax-paying businesses that are legal under state law.

As the American people appear all but prepared to end our war on marijuana once and for all, the federal government is busy doubling down on the even-more-mindless battle against people who use the drug medicinally. The disconnect is staggering and continues to expand as support for full legalization surges into the majority, while medical marijuana maintains the massive 80% national support it’s had for some time now.

Today, at this very moment, support for the cause of marijuana reform has never been greater, and tomorrow it will be greater still. The surging momentum of the issue is generating discussion all around us, even by the media that once ignored it, which now misses no opportunity to cover the controversy over cannabis.

Alas, it seems the only person not talking about it is our president, who campaigned as an agent of change, who once spoke with seeming sincerity of the need to “rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws,” who was elected after promising to reform federal enforcement priorities in medical marijuana states, and who earned universal praise from the press and the public when his administration announced its intention to do just that.

Whether deliberately or through a willful failure to follow the issue at all, Obama has thrown all of it away amidst an extraordinary stampede of over-the-top anti-pot posturing that makes Bush’s drug war leadership look lazy by comparison. The situation is spiraling as we speak into new depths of absurdity, and many of the people who’ve made things this bad are busy brainstorming ways to make it worse.

Still, if there is one lesson to be learned from the recent history of marijuana policy in America, it is that support for reform is galvanized when the law is enforced in a manner that shocks the public conscience. The Obama Administration’s past attempts at pandering to demands for a more measured criminal justice philosophy prove that he was once paying attention. Now, as the tension escalates with each new federal threat, Obama’s silence on the matter is becoming conspicuous and embarrassing.

The time has come for the president, and no one else, to come forward and explain to the American people why war is still being waged against patients and providers in states that permit the medical use of marijuana. What the people want has been perfectly clear for a long time, and if we can’t have it, we deserve an honest answer as to why.

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Comments

5 Comments

foam on
October 22, 2011 7:32 am

This nonsense is going to throw hundreds of thousands of taxpaying citizens out of work in the middle of the Great reccession -Stoopid -Clearly a gift to the drug cartels -Ron Paul and Dennis Kucunich would take Cali on a third party ticket since Obama is losing Cali

Anonymous on
October 22, 2011 2:16 am

Folks, let’s face it – this is just another political game prior to the election year madness and witchhunts that consume the U.S. every four years. It’s like a recurrent case of malaria or some other disease, only this one is psychological in nature and sociological in practice. The Prop. 215 laws have been abused by entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck and ignored by the state government in California which should have created a structure to regulate, tax and enforce a uniform statute statewide. The dispensaries have created a defacto legalization, and this will be sure to be a nationwide political campaign issue. The so called “War on Drugs” is still a rallying cry for conservatives, and could give them many votes among people who might not support them otherwise. If you say “Obama let us down”, then look at the current lineup of Republicans running for president. Do you see any friends of the legalization movement there? Ron Paul will NEVER become the GOP nominee. His own party would abandon him and deliver ZERO support even if he did win enough primaries. Besides, he is going to be 77 years old in 2012 – by far the oldest man sworn in to the presidency, even if he could win.
What do you think the “Drug War” would be like with Rick Perry in office?
Probably like an Old West style massacre of Native Americans, with pot supporters plying the part of the Indians. Mitt Romney? He would be nothing more than recycled Bush. Michelle Bachmann? The Salem witch trials all over again. Herman Cain? Here’s his 9-9-9 plan for you- nine years for nine plants and a nine thousand dollar fine. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and John Huntsman can’t win either, but they sure would like to be appointed to some high profile government office- possibly even “Drug Czar”. Watch some of the debates – if their mean spiritedness and outright lunacy doesn’t impress you, go to the candidates web sites. Most of their rhetoric looks like it’s lifted straight off a Neo-Nazi page or KKK homepage. They’re saving America alright – for the rich white people. And potheads don’t qualify.
The only white demographic Obama carried in the 2008 election was among young voters, age 18 to 25. If this group stays home in 2012, some Republican stands a damn good chance of winning. Could you face a future of 4 or 8(!!?) years of what we endured with Bush? America barely survived the last GOP regime, and literally may not with another one. Republican presidents seem to have only one foreign policy: War.If you’re worried about the “Drug War”,think about “World War”. Keep sane and stable leadership in the White House; get out and vote for Obama AGAIN in 2012. If you don’t vote, you are casting a ballot for the lunatic fringe masquerading as conservative leadership. Remember – it’s your own world (and life) you could be saving.
Murph the Surf

Murph the Surf on
October 22, 2011 2:13 am

Folks, let’s face it – this is just another political game prior to the election year madness and witchhunts that consume the U.S. every four years. It’s like a recurrent case of malaria or some other disease, only this one is psychological in nature and sociological in practice. The Prop. 215 laws have been abused by entrepreneurs looking to make a quick buck and ignored by the state government in California which should have created a structure to regulate, tax and enforce a uniform statute statewide. The dispensaries have created a defacto legalization, and this will be sure to be a nationwide political campaign issue. The so called “War on Drugs” is still a rallying cry for conservatives, and could give them many votes among people who might not support them otherwise. If you say “Obama let us down”, then look at the current lineup of Republicans running for president. Do you see any friends of the legalization movement there? Ron Paul will NEVER become the GOP nominee. His own party would abandon him and deliver ZERO support even if he did win enough primaries. Besides, he is going to be 77 years old in 2012 – by far the oldest man sworn in to the presidency, even if he could win.
What do you think the “Drug War” would be like with Rick Perry in office?
Probably like an Old West style massacre of Native Americans, with pot supporters plying the part of the Indians. Mitt Romney? He would be nothing more than recycled Bush. Michelle Bachmann? The Salem witch trials all over again. Herman Cain? Here’s his 9-9-9 plan for you- nine years for nine plants and a nine thousand dollar fine. Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and John Huntsman can’t win either, but they sure would like to be appointed to some high profile government office- possibly even “Drug Czar”. Watch some of the debates – if their mean spiritedness and outright lunacy doesn’t impress you, go to the candidates web sites. Most of their rhetoric looks like it’s lifted straight off a Neo-Nazi page or KKK homepage. They’re saving America alright – for the rich white people. And potheads don’t qualify.
The only white demographic Obama carried in the 2008 election was among young voters, age 18 to 25. If this group stays home in 2012, some Republican stands a damn good chance of winning. Could you face a future of 4 or 8(!!?) years of what we endured with Bush? America barely survived the last GOP regime, and literally may not with another one. Republican presidents seem to have only one foreign policy: War.If you’re worried about the “Drug War”,think about “World War”. Keep sane and stable leadership in the White House; get out and vote for Obama AGAIN in 2012. If you don’t vote, you are casting a ballot for the lunatic fringe masquerading as conservative leadership. Remember – it’s your own world (and life) you could be saving.

onegreenday on
October 21, 2011 5:11 pm

If anybody believes anything a politician tells them
they deserve to be deceived. Politicians don’t tell you the truth.
They say what you want to hear, so that you do what they want you to do.
It’s nothing new. Politicians do what they want and answer to nobody.
A politician can’t survive politics unless they can lie and pass a lie detector test…welcome to the real world. We need to reform our political system around the people and uiversal internet access.